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The pleasure of days spent in the beautiful surroundings of Castleward
was offset somewhat by the frustration of an evening spent programming
the SI equipment prior to the event. Chief culprit this time was
the erratic performance of the master stations that frequently
refused to communicate with the control stations. This is the
latest in a long series of problems that have plagued our Sportident
kit for four years. Thankfully the twenty new type controls obtained
last year have been totally reliable and, since they don’t
require programming, are absolute simplicity to use. It is difficult
now to escape the conclusion that we must replace the older controls
(which means writing off £3,000 worth of equipment after
only four years) if we are not to waste the time of our planners,
controllers and organisers. When we do, we must make sure we are
buying reliability – two master stations that appear not
to work properly is not a good start!
Competitors’ complaints about the siting of Control 168
prompted a visit by the Planner and myself to investigate. We
had not expected to encounter a bull ambling through the woodland.
I’ve never liked bulls. I think it’s their size I’m
afraid of, and this one was well up there with the best; truly
a lot of bull. Regrettably the complaints about control 168 could
not be so classified, and I must admit to an error in placing
the control. Those who approached from the path to the east probably
had little difficulty, and indeed may have made the same error
in interpreting the map as I had and therefore been unaware of
a problem. However, competitors cutting through the green or crossing
the fence at the edge of the map into adjacent open land so that
they could approach from the west were certainly disadvantaged.
My sincere apologies to all of you who were affected, and especially
to anyone who lost position in the results as a consequence.
The purpose of the bonus controls was to put extra distance into
the small competition area, but they were used surprisingly often
(and correctly), given that a repeat visit for half points was
an inefficient way of building score. Well done to everyone for
getting your heads round the principle. And we’d better
get used to it - now that we have Declan’s cunning spreadsheet
for making sense of the SI data we could see the format used frequently.
The fine weather was a blessing for competitors and officials
alike, and helped to make what I hope can be considered an enjoyable
and challenging event.
As this was the first event that I had been involved in on the
organisational side I approached it with some trepidation. My
worry was that I would miss something; something that I didn’t
even know needed to be done. The devil is in the detail!
As the event approached I was aware that there had been a number
of score events in the calendar. The one at Cairn Wood really
put the wind up me when there were multiple SI unit failures.
I watched with great interest and some awe as the team pulled
together and sorted out the results with what seemed to be the
greatest of ease.
The first thing was to get my hands on the Big Red Book - the
official’s bible for organising, planning and controlling
events. A quick visit to the long suffering custodian of the LVO
equipment, Alan Pentland, followed by a bit of light reading and
the tasks were fairly clear. Actually how the tasks were achieved
was less clear so the only thing to do was to begin an interrogation
of other club members. Fortunately for me, I had a wealth of experience
on which to draw, the other officials for the Castleward event
being Stephen Gilmore and Harry Bell. Between them and a number
of other willing victims the information began to get collated.
The permission from The National Trust to use the grounds was
obtained in November and the staff on the ground were very helpful
and a pleasure to deal with. Thanks to Jackie Baird at Castleward
NT for her help.
Things were in good shape and at least I would have Declan to
assist with the computer side of things if I ran into trouble.
Wrong!! Declan had decided that an orienteering trip to Portugal
was more attractive than a day at Castleward. Imagine that! As
Declan’s manual says, Don’t Panic!
Plan B sprung into action. Sign up for Declan’s computer
course. Not only would I get a chance to learn a bit about the
SportIdent software but I could maybe enlist some helpers keen
to try out their new found skills. I could maybe even collect
some of the equipment from the Tollymore event. .
The next thing was to gather together the rest of the gear. Another
trip to Alan Pentland led to a car stuffed with what I hoped was
everything required. At this point it all became clear why Ferm-O
and North West operate with an event trailer. Now there’s
a solution to what must be a perennial problem. Everything in
one place, labelled up and complete – just hook up and go.
Easy.
A coming together with Planner Stephen and Controller Harry led
to an evening’s entertainment with the programming of the
SI kit. The combination of old and new SI boxes were a source
of fun better than any Playstation game but with less predictable
results. Nevertheless progress was made and confidence levels
soared to a heady 50%.
One last trip to Castleward to check that everything was in place
with the National Trust, a few makeshift repairs to stiles and it
was time to pack the car ready for the big day.
Although pleased that there was to be no rain I was concerned
that it would freeze. By now the SI units were firmly planted
on the course and shivering in the cold. It was deemed to be the
cold that was the cause of the SI units failing at Cairn Wood
and the O-team had replaced all the batteries prior to the Tollymore
event. However, Tollymore wasn’t very cold and I was unsure
if we were out of the woods. With the programming fun still fresh
in my mind I had all sorts of scenarios conjured up of counting
punch holes for days.
Event day turned out to be bright and cool. SI units had all
woken up as requested and all the willing and press ganged helpers
arrived. Huge thanks to everyone who helped. It is not possible
to thank everyone individually but I must mention the Kay family
who covered the bulk of the registration and download.
Thanks to the McCanns for organising the refreshments in aid
of the junior squad.
Thanks to Stephen and Harry for keeping me on what I hope turned
out to be the right track whilst holding down their own duties.
And last but not least, thanks to all the people who turned up
and competed. We had 50 adults and 24 juniors running on Saturday
and I hope everyone had a good day out.
All in all I enjoyed the event and being organiser for a day
turned out to be a positive experience. Now, where did I put that
flag and those map bags………..
I saw the golden sun rise over Strangford Narrows on Saturday
25 Feb, signalling the start to an interesting day with its highs
and lows.
Harry and I had swapped control placing and verification roles.
Due to work commitments I was unable to find time before the day
of the event to place controls on the tagged sites, so Harry had
placed all the controls and I was up bright and early to check.
By 9.30 the job was done, Gordon had the organisation well in
hand and we were set for a good event. I always find that team
work with other club members is the most satisfying part of officiating
at an event and working with Gordon and Harry was certainly no
exception.
By the time of the start the clouds had completely cleared and
the club flag was fluttering in the wind giving perfect conditions
for the event. Gordon handled the start procedure with complete
authority with no-one daring look at their map before the hooter.
I hope that the one-minute compulsory map study time which is
part of draft score event guidelines was appreciated.
The start location in front of Castleward House was fairly central
to the map. The aim was to see competitors fan out on all directions.
I was a bit disappointed to see most competitors go west to control
164, but from there the spread was good.
All the open land which had not been available for some time
and also offers the best orienteering was available for this competition.
Therefore I had located control clusters in the open areas to
the E, S and W. Therefore overall more attractive points totals
were allocated to these areas than to the controls to the north
where there were only a few high point controls available. The
results show that competitors who went north fared less well and
those who picked up the eastern cluster did better.
At a score event too often the fastest runners are able to collect
all the controls, so they don’t have the problem that us
lesser mortals have in deciding which controls to omit. The bonus
system was an attempt to give everyone this problem, as well as
spreading runners more evenly. Unfortunately it was not completely
tested as Steven Linton and Patrick Higgins etc were not running.
As I think most competitors worked out there was not a particular
advantage in second punching bonus controls in this competition
and interestingly Igor Stefko winner of the Mens Open did not
use bonus controls and Steven Potts winner of the M18- (this class
was not permitted to use bonus controls) achieved the highest
score. However Declan has developed software for the calculations,
so it is easily possible in future competitions to give any chosen
points score for second punching. The number of controls required
between punching can also be changed, opening up smaller areas
for successful score events. Hopefully the format can be tried
again.
The results analysis shows that a group of juniors and a group
of senior ladies ran together which is contrary to the spirit
of the competition. An analysis of the route decisions of both
groups suggests that had the runners concerned run independently,
most would have achieved a better individual score. Any member
of the LVO committee will confirm that you can’t make many
decisions collectively in an hour!
With most competitors back, another role swap as Gordon coordinated
the collection of the controls, whilst I supervised the results
process. The SI equipment had behaved itself and just at the point
in the day when all seemed to have gone smoothly problems began
to surface. Black ink ran low for the last few results prints
and we didn’t have a replacement cartridge. Then the spreadsheet
wasn’t calculating penalty points correctly. Declan, had
he not been in Portugal, could have of course sorted this in an
instant.
Then the real bad news emerged that there was a report of a wrongly
placed control. Late in the afternoon Harry and I visited control
169, the most northerly control and have concluded that the control
was placed in the smaller re-entrant to the east of the site marked
on the map. Thus runners who approached from the west or south
were disadvantaged. This mistake has most likely altered the outcome
of the Men’s Open competition. I want to apologise particularly
to Ivan Millar and to thank him for his good grace and sportsman
like acceptance of this error.
I’ve always wondered how planners and controllers can make
such silly mistakes. As dusk fell on Castleward Estate, I discovered
the answer.
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